Why the Animal Agriculture Industry Needs More Than Good Samaritans to Make a Change

Support OneGreenPlanet

Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Please support us!

Revelations about the suffering of hens at facilities run by Perdue Chicken — the third largest chicken producer in the nation — have shocked consumers. As Nicholas Kristof shows in a recent column in the New York Times, “Abusing the Chickens We Eat,” Perdue Chicken’s claims that their products are “cage-free,” “natural,” or “humanely raised” — couldn’t be further from the truth.

Craig Watts, a farmer for Perdue, couldn’t swallow these fabrications, and so he encouraged the nonprofit organization Compassion in World Farming to document the horrific suffering of hens on Perdue farms. Kristof describes these conditions as “hellish:” most animals had lost their feathers, were full of sores, couldn’t walk, and lived in filth and excrement piles that further burned their flesh.

Advertisement

Why We Need Transparency

Corporations like Perdue illegally use terms such as “humane” and “cage free” to deceive consumers who care about animal welfare. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) standards are poorly defined, and open the doors for meat producers to hoodwink well-intentioned customers into believing they’re purchasing a bird who was raised humanely. Under watchdog pressure from animal advocates, Perdue will remove the disingenuous label “humane.” But the world wouldn’t know about the true suffering of these hens — and of nearly all egg-laying hens nationwide — without documentation of animal cruelty, and journalists like Kristof sharing this information with the public.

That’s why we can’t just rely on Good Samaritan farmers to come forward; we need greater transparency in animal agriculture. Factory farms confine and slaughter tens of billions of animals a year in unimaginably cruel conditions — as a result, this industry thrives on a culture of secrecy, misinformation, and deception. Undercover investigations routinely reveal sickening and chronic cruelty on factory farms. And advocates like the Animal Legal Defense Fund must regularly urge federal agencies like the USDA to enforce animal welfare regulations against this industry.

A Backwards Industry

Meanwhile, instead of going after the animal abusers, the powerful agricultural lobby is twisting laws to go after animal advocates for recording hidden activity on factory farms. The agriculture industry uses insidious new “ag gag” statutes — like the ones the Animal Legal Defense Fund and a coalition of public interest groups are challenging in Utah and Idaho for violating the U.S. Constitution — to criminalize the legal behavior of advocates for animals, civil rights, labor laws, the environment, and food safety. If this industry has its way, this will “gag” and silence whistle-blowers whose video documentation of illegal behavior would prevent corporations from deceiving consumers. Something is seriously backwards when state laws violate the Constitution to protect corporations at the expense of the people.

In our consumer-driven society, people want to make informed choices. If the world could see the hell-on-earth chickens are forced into on factory farms, then, and only then, could they truly make informed choices. Our society must not criminalize whistle-blowers for bringing truth to power, but that’s just what ag gag laws would do — protect factory farms like Perdue Chickens by silencing those who care about animals. And that’s why we need more transparency in this industry, not less.

Comments

What if it were humans being confined and slaughtered like this. Beaten , Tortured… confined with little room to even move. Their young torn from them moments after birth and sliced and diced. Oh wait….. that\’s right .. it has happened to humans.. it was called the Holocaust. We continue the legacy, only we call it \’Factory Farming\’ … How ignorant.

It is very difficult to change the culture of the way most people think about meat they buy in the supermarkets. In the lunchroom at my work if I happen to talk about such things, I always get disapproving looks and negative comments. It seems that most of society believes it is there right to eat meat and that it is a necessary component to a nutritious diet. In a way they can\’t help it because they have been so misinformed and mislead all their lives. I personally am vegan, but have eaten some eggs from a friend who has a few chickens which I have seen and the environment they live in is exceptional. when they no longer lay eggs they are able to just live out the rest of their natural lives on the small farm. It is like trying to convince people about climate change when they believe there is not a problem. Maybe it is a protective mechanism to shield the belief system they have always known. It is going to take a long time and a lot of education to the general public to see that what is the real truth. It is never to late to change.